By Ed Avis
Kevin Rowe says his friends in reprographics rarely send him Christmas cards anymore, and he knows why: His company – iPlanTables – sells a product that greatly reduces the need for printing AEC documents.
Rowe did not create iPlanTables to intentionally challenge the reprographics industry, of course. The long-time reprographics veteran simply was capitalizing on a trend in the construction document business that he observed decades ago.
“We kept seeing the power of the PDF,” Rowe says. “I remember being on a panel at an IRgA meeting and being told that is a file that's gonna overtake our world because it's just that powerful for what it could do to transmit information. And that's proven out to be pretty much the way it is.”
Early Days
Rowe’s career in reprographics began in a different era. His father was a salesman for Frederick Post, and Rowe remembers coloring on the backside of sheets of diazo paper when he was in first or second grade. As a young teen in the 1970s he worked in a blueprint shop his father owned, and later got a job at the Corpus Christi location of Ridgway’s Blueprint.
Rowe’s longest stint in a reprographics shop was at Western Blue Print in Kansas City. He was hired as a salesman in 1981, and over the next two decades he climbed the ladder to president and co-owner.
While he was there he started seeing the future. The number of customers was climbing, but the quantity of print was dropping. The culprit? The PDF.
“I could see the power of that PDF and where it was gonna go, and recognized that one of our dynamics that we always tracked – number of prints per customer – was dropping. You could just tell that people were obviously going from the 100 sets to 50 to 25.”
To help repro firms – his and others – capitalize on that digital trend, he launched the U.S. Reprographics Network in 1997. At that time, many repro firms sent prints via FedEx whenever clients needed them outside the local area. The cost of the FedEx was often more than the cost of the prints, so Rowe decided that if the files could be sent electronically and printed locally, the two repro firms involved – the one with the client and the one closest to where the prints were needed – could share some of the revenue that FedEx had been taking.
U.S. Reprographics Network reached more than 100 partners by 2001 or 2002, Rowe remembers, but things did not always go smoothly. A key problem was that the partners did not all share the same commitment to quality, which meant some jobs sent over the network did not get done well. Errors made the originating shop look bad, of course, so some became reluctant to use the network.
In addition, other groups – such as PEiR, RSA and ReproMAX – started to bite into the same market. “There just wasn’t room for everybody,” Rowe says. By 2006, the network shut down.
Rowe had sold his share of Western Blue Print in 2004, so with the end of U.S. Reprographics Network, he had time for other things. He did some consulting work in reprographics and ventured into some other businesses, including a pizza and yogurt restaurant and a marina. His family dealt with the loss of a child during that time as well, which led to some deep contemplation.
“It was pretty dark times, and I had really exhausted my resources, so I said, ‘What am I gonna do?’” Rowe remembers. “Because I had to do something. And that’s where iPlanTables came out.”
iPlanTables is Born
Rowe knew that with digital files rapidly growing in importance, a tool that allowed people to conveniently use them would be in demand. He had seen many AEC folks viewing PDFs on tablets or laptops – a giant version of the same thing, with the same features, seemed like a sure win. He launched the company in his garage in 2010.
“I just started putting the pieces together and really the hardest part was learning the language, the new language of audio visual,” he says. “I had to learn what kind of monitor to use and what kind of touch technology and what's out there and who are the people and who are the competitors. So that took a long time.”
Rowe did not want to be in the software business – and BlueBeam and ProCore already existed and were being constantly updated – so he focused on the hardware end of the system. He outfitted his tables with PCs strong enough to run that software, found the best giant touchscreen available, and bolted it all to a frame.
He showed his early prototypes to friends in AEC, and they fed him ideas for improvement. One idea was to add screens to the sides, such as a screen that would allow the user to view a spec book and another to handle email or Slack, all without interrupting the viewing of the drawing.
“You're sitting there and you essentially have your full drawing in front of you,” Rowe explains. “You got the spec book electronically on one side and you got whatever else you need – email or whatever is going to run your day-to-day business – going on your other side. So it kind of becomes a command center.”
He started selling tables slowly, and before long started getting re-orders from companies that ordered one and decided they needed multiple tables. When 4K monitors became available, sales took off.
“We sold a lot of iPlanTables with HD monitors, but once it went to 4k about six years ago, that's when it really became a very powerful device. Now we have customers all over the country and all over the world. Once they buy one and test it, they call us back because they want them for other people in the office.”
Over the years the equipment has improved with better touchscreen technology, more powerful computers and lots of potential customization. For example, they built a set of them with insulation for use in Antarctica and one with a gas generator to use at a job site without power. But the basic concept remains: It’s a big screen that lets people see digital documents in full size.
Still Opportunities for Reprographics
Early on, Rowe tried to establish a dealers network using some of his old reprographics shop connections, but the shop owners perceived that a client with an iPlanTable probably would stop buying print or printing equipment, so they weren’t too enthused about selling them. Rowe says a few even secured a territory but then purposely did not sell the iPlanTables, thus preventing anyone in the area from buying one.
Eventually he decided that direct sales was the way to go, and that’s how most happen today. However, Rowe feels a forward-thinking reprographics shop could still profit by selling the tables. They have the connections among the potential buyers, after all, and the dealer’s margin would equal a lot of print work.
It might take creativity. For example, one construction firm is using iPlanTables during construction, then leaving the table in the building along with a complete set of close-out files. That way the owner can use the table to see the BIM files, PDF drawings, or whatever else they want. Seems like a reprographics firm could be supplying that and profiting from it.
Another idea: Pair an iPlanTable with your scanning/archiving service. This adds a pile of profit up front, and you can keep the residual income from further scanning and file updating as a building gets renovated or more drawings need to be scanned.
The bottom line, as far as Rowe sees it, is that the digital wave is not letting up and reprographics firms should capitalize on it as best as they can.
“Whether it's my device or some other device, this is gonna happen, it's not up to us anymore,” he says. “We need to be the one that steps in that void of the printing.”
Interested? Contact Rowe at kevin.rowe@iprojectsolutions.com